“Of all the things you could have given him.” I shook my head. “Instead of worrying about how to incapacitate me, how about arming him with a fucking rocket launcher?”
“You can’t kill a demon with conventional weapons.”
“No, but you could slow him the hell down if you blow his boat out of the water.”
“Point taken.” After a pause, Carter muttered, “He was right, though.”
“What do you mean?”
“I heard your conversation. There’s no chance you would have stayed behind willingly tonight, and if you’d been on that boat when Abel swooped in, you’d either be dead now or you’d be their prisoner. Had they gone with the latter, they would have soon figured out hurting you did more harm to Elias than hurting him directly, and they would’ve had all kinds of fun torturing you.”
“You don’t know what would have happened,” I said. “I might have been able to help.”
“How?”
“Maybe I could have knocked out the engine on Abel’s boat, before he took ours out. Or maybe I could have engulfed him in fog so he couldn’t see where he was going, or capsized him, or—”
“That all sounds great,” Carter interrupted, “but you’d have to get pretty close to the other boat to do any of that, because your magic’s not very strong. Meanwhile, Abel could have snapped your neck with a flick of his finger, and Elias could have watched you die.”
“Or maybe I could have protected him! I should have been allowed to try.”
My voice broke, and Carter glanced at me and said, “You really care about him.”
“Of course I do, and I need to save him.”
“We will,” he said.
“How?”
“We’ll figure something out.” That wasn’t particularly reassuring.
Eventually, we arrived at the airport. It was almost deserted in that terrible weather, aside from Carter’s pilot, who had the private jet all ready to go. We hurried across the tarmac and took a seat in the plane, and I said, “Before we take off, I need to use your phone.”
As he handed it over, he asked, “Who are you calling?”
“My best friend. You and I are no match for the brothers, but if we add a powerful warlock to the mix, we might stand a better chance of surviving this.”
When I dialed Griffin’s number, it went straight to voicemail. I left a message that said, “This is Mateo, and I need your help, Griffin. I’m really sorry about interrupting your honeymoon, but this is an emergency. My mate’s been taken prisoner by a pair of demons who are going to torture and kill him, and I don’t think I can get him back without you. I don’t have my phone, so please call me at this number when you get my message. I’ll explain everything when I see you, but please come home, and hurry.”
As I handed Carter’s phone back to him, I said, “I don’t know what else to do. Griffin and his husband Ari are currently in Paris, and it’ll take time for them to make it back to California. Meanwhile, every minute Elias is in the brothers’ hands is a minute too long.”
“The brothers probably won’t do anything to him until they’re reunited, so I’ll see if I can buy us a little time.”
He started typing a message, and I asked, “What are you doing?”
“I’m sending some of my people to watch the airports for the brothers’ private jet, and I’m asking others to stand by and be ready to disrupt Cain’s little empire. If he’s busy putting out fires, he won’t have time to deal with Elias.”
“That’s a good idea,” I said. “Are any of your people witches or warlocks?”
“Just one, my second-in-command, Desiree. Her powers aren’t off the charts or anything, but she’s smart and extremely capable. That’s who I just messaged. Aside from her though, I tend to avoid people with magical ability.”
“Why?”
He glanced at me, then looked away as he said, “Because they can sense the darkness in me, so I make them extremely uncomfortable. Somehow, it doesn’t bother Desiree, but she’s a rare exception.”
“I could see how that might be a problem.” After a few moments, I asked, “Does Elias have any witch or warlock friends who might be willing to help us?”
“No, he’s a bit of a loner. What about you? Do you know anyone else with magical ability, besides the person you just called?”
“Griffin is friends with a couple of vampire-warlock hybrids. I don’t know their number, but I’ll ask him to contact them as soon as he calls me back. Then there’s Griffin’s husband, but I think Ari’s pretty much out of gas.”
“What does that mean?”
“He’s a fallen angel. As I understand it, they only have a finite amount of magic when they fall, and once it’s gone it’s gone.”
“That’s really too bad. An angel at the height of their power would have definitely tipped the scales in our favor.”